- [Narrator] My goal in this chapteris to show you a case study for buildinga parametric design algorithm for a musical instrument.And this chapter will be a nice blendof some of the modeling ideas you might befamiliar with already in Rhino,along with an introduction to some of the benefitsof working in Grasshopper.Namely, the ability to link together core design featuresin a way that can be quickly andseamlessly tweaked and updated.Now, this is a very unique instrument calledthe linguiphone of tremulous communion.And it's one I actually designed myselfas part of an art project.You might have actually already seen this in actionon linden.com in the creative documentaryMaker: The New Art Class.

If you haven't seen it yet, I would highly encourageyou to check it out.The instrument and the very unique way that it's playedcomes in around the six minute and 42 mark,but of course, you should watch the whole thing.It's got a lot of great informationabout digital fabrication in education.So you can see this instrument hasjust a few sets of parts.So I have a wooden base and a wooden top.Those are made out of the same kind of material.I ended up prototyping in both plywood and walnut.We have some thin metal keys on the side.And then some round metal frets that the keyskind of sit on top of.

And all of those parts are sandwiched togetherwith some machine screws and washersand on the underside are some threaded insertsthat help everything bolt together.So fairly simple, in terms of the individual componentsthat make up the instrument.But to get to that deceptively simple designtook some real work.Especially since I needed to produce several hundredof these for a series of instrument building workshops.I had to make sure that they could be producedas economically as possible,and that they could be assembled easily by non-experts.Now that process took a lot of creative designfirst with a couple of hand made prototypesand then through an iterative design processin Grasshopper and Rhino.

So let's jump into modeling a musical instrumentand getting our feet wet with a realalgorithmic modeling project.We'll go ahead and switch over to Grasshopper and Rhino.To get our Rhino file set up, I'm going to go aheadand make a new filefrom the template, Small Objects, Inches.And let's just get our grid set up.That's under file, properties, grid.So I'd like my grid line count set to 144.

And that'll give me about 18 inches outfrom the origin in each direction,once we get the rest of these settings in.I like to change my minor grid lines to happen everyeighth of an inch, so that's every 0.125 inches.Then I like major grid lines every eight minor grid lines.So that'll give a major grid line every inch.And then my snap spacing, I'll go aheadand put this on an eighth of an inch for now.Since most of the modeling that we'll dois through Grasshopper, the snap spacingisn't super important in this case.

And in Grasshopper, I've already got a definition opencalled 0010Instrumentsetup.gh.And this outlines all the steps I think we'll needin our algorithm.So I get user-defined dimensions,I generate some profiles for the different shapes,the base and the through holes and the top wooden piece.I make some tracks for the frets to slide into.I extrude those base profiles andthen I collect all the bake-able geometry.So, you can think of these stepsalmost like an outline for how we'll set upour Grasshopper file.

Some of these might be very simple,they might only take one component.Some of these might be very complex and might havelots of, sort of, sub parts.So this is our overall algorithm andyou could almost think of each stepas it's own little mini algorithm.And through the videos in this chapter,we'll break down how to approach each step.Okay, we're all set up here with a plan.In the next video, we can work on flushing outour algorithm.

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10/25/2017

Algorithmic modeling is where design and programming intersect. Grasshopper—a plugin for Rhino 3D—is a graphical algorithm editor that allows you to create complex 3D models with less grunt work. The resulting designs are both sophisticated and flexible. In this course, artist and programmer Chris Reilly introduces advanced math techniques and fully-developed hands-on projects that help you understand how to make the most out of the parametric design tools in Grasshopper. See how to build a flexible product design for mass production with a parametric design algorithm. Plus, learn how to use plugins like Ladybug to model big data sets, generate recursive patterns with scripting, and build geometric patterns that auto-tessellate.

By the end of the course, you'll see how even basic literacy in Grasshopper can be applied to developing projects for art, manufacturing, architecture, and design.